Jaq’s Harp (4 page)

The head of Giant Corp, the man behind all the swindles, the corporate thefts and just plain murders, finally swept into the room, wife trailing behind him, to stand in front of a large white sofa at the side of the monochromatic room. He was a short stocky man, only a few inches taller than his wife. His white suit was spotless, his black tie perfect, and his shoes buffed to a midnight shine. His skin was ruddy beneath his slicked dark hair.

With a grandiose wave, he gestured to the balcony framed by the open sliding doors and fluttering white curtains. “It’s a nice view, isn’t it?”

A cold sweat chilled Harp’s skin. This balcony had seen leapers over the years, and they hadn’t leaped of their own accord.

“Monsieur.” He nodded and once again Harp wondered what Ochre’s first name was. He’d been unable to unearth his background and Mother didn’t have the intel in its databanks. Ochre’d paid handsomely to wipe out his past.

“You always struck me as a man of action instead of a mere singer. Vera tells me you’ve been acting suspicious. There’s always a reason for strange behavior. Will you tell me here and now, or must we do this the hard way?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m John Singer. Just a musician.” Harp figured he had about half a minute before things got ugly. The intel on Ochre was that as his business had crumbled, he’d become more and more vicious. In the past year, Harp had watched the man grow leaner, the hardened light in his eye becoming desperate.

The guards grabbed his arms from behind. Focused on Ochre, he hadn’t seen them move. He pulled from side to side, but they held him in a solid grip.

“Vera, you may go now.” Ochre stood in the middle of the room, his body relaxed, as his wife walked up to him and kissed him in a carnal, hungry meeting of mouths. Lips wet, she backed away, finger-waved to Harp, and shut the door behind her. In an unhurried manner, Ochre ignored him, strolled to his desk, pulled a roll of wire out of a drawer and tossed it to his captors.

Wrestling, tugging and a few hard punches to the gut still ended up with Harp bound about the torso, arms pinned to his side. He’d underestimated the goons. He’d played this wrong.

Now he’d been roped and tied with remotely controlled wires which punished its victims by crushing them to death.

Leaning his weight against the guards, he couldn’t break their unyielding hold. He had to make this interrogation last, in case Jaq needed more time to get away. When she’d shown up, she’d said she had six hours. He wasn’t sure how long ago that was. He couldn’t very well ask for the time.

Nothing left to do but string it out.

He’d deflect Ochre’s attention, and the man would never know anyone else had been involved. For that matter, Ochre didn’t know what was going on, what was involved, or who. If only he’d gotten his harmonica with the evidence into Jaq’s hands. But if all else failed and he didn’t get out, Jaq’s testimony at the Giant’s trial would bring them all down. She’d stop the vaccine from hitting the streets.

Jaq had to get away.

Ochre strolled to the balcony and nodded to the guards.

“Move.” One of them tugged at him, and he nearly stumbled forward until he locked his knees.

“I think we’d be more comfortable here, on the couch, don’t you?” Harp dug in his heels.

At each side of him, they yanked him under the arms and dragged him to the balcony. His feet flailed but didn’t catch on anything. With a thrust, they dumped him outside the glass doors onto a balcony larger than Jaq’s apartment. He rolled up onto his feet.

The sun beat down on his back.

“Take a look at the view.” Ochre smiled at him with a genuine pleasantness.

He didn’t turn to look over the railing and into the clouds beneath. A shiver rolled over him. He’d looked down before. As a youth, he’d watched helplessly as his nanny had ended years of torment, crying at odds times of the day in the middle of their lessons, looking haggard and tired all the time. With no friends for protection and no kindness from her English employers, she’d suffered for too long. One day, after receiving a summons to report to the administration offices, she’d climbed over the railing in Harp’s room and leaped.

As he grew older, he put together the clues to the kind of harassment endured by her and other landers brought to the island as servants and abused by an overseer the English family never reprimanded. He’d left home. In his infrequent visits, he’d never gone back to his room or stood on one of the balconies.

Mouth dry, he croaked, “Nice view. Lots of clouds.”

“I don’t know why you’re here. Something’s been off about you from the beginning, but you’ve been careful. You haven’t taken anything or tipped your hand. I’d started to doubt my instincts.” Ochre frowned. “Now Vera’s suspicious too. That’s enough for me.”

“I’m a musician. John Singer.” It didn’t matter what he said. Ochre planned on killing him. He’d had some plan of talking his way out, or at least placating him until he dropped his guard, but no dice.

“I don’t take chances. Not anymore. You won’t take this—” Ochre swept his arm to encompass the room, “—away from me. Whoever, whatever you are.”

“My name is John Singer. I’m a musician.”

The head of Giant stood between him and the door. His arms were useless, but he couldn’t go out like this. He dove, head first, desperate to bowl over anyone in his way. Ochre sidestepped as Harp plunged to the floor.

He hit the hard deck. The rough surface ripped across his cheek in a stinging abrasion. He groaned and struggled to his knees.

Ochre took out a control unit, and Harp sent out a silent prayer to Jaq. He loved her. He loved her more than this job. He wanted nothing more than her. And he wanted her to know it. He’d made a mistake leaving.

“Jaq,” he moaned.

This would hurt like hell. And now that he faced the end, all he could do was think of her. How he should’ve done things differently. How he should’ve married her, stayed home and had kids.

A baby. To see her round with their child would have been the crowning achievement of his life. He no longer needed to go after the corrupt. He no longer needed to ensure people on the floating islands were treated fairly. He couldn’t be everyone’s savior. He couldn’t even be his own. He wanted to be a lander. With Jaq. And Merry.

“I can’t let you go. Vera and I have worked too hard to get the cash flowing back into Giant. We were only a few years from having to forsake this island and live on the ground.” Ochre’s face took on an unhealthy pallor. “I’d never do that to Vera. Neither will you.”

Ochre switched on the remote. The wires binding Harp’s torso cinched with a sizzle and constricted violently. He couldn’t breathe. It was as if Ochre planned to pulverize him, grind his bones down to dust.

His teeth clattered. With a groan, he flopped toward Ochre.

Where was he? He couldn’t see the man through the white clouding his vision. He panted, each breath hurt. Now he knew why people jumped over. This was hell.

Ochre backhanded him across the cheek. “You’re a singer. Sing.”

Harp held back the curses. He wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction. He wouldn’t give the man anything.

A yank at his back brought him up and thrust him toward the railing. His feet scrambled for purchase on the balcony floor. The slats of the steel-girded railings bruised his skin.

“Give me a reason not to throw you over.” Ochre sounded as if he hadn’t broken a sweat.

Harper swallowed and kept his mouth shut. The wires tightened again as a hand lifted him from the floor.

This was it.

Jaq seethed inside the wardrobe. She had what she needed, the cure for Merry, tucked beneath her jacket, but she couldn’t be happy, not after Harp had marched out the door flanked by two beefy guards.

The silence in the waiting room made her rough breathing loud.

Long moments passed. Moisture pooled between her shoulder blades. Her knees shook and an itch on her right thigh drove her to distraction, but she didn’t dare move to scratch.

The quiet in the waiting area taunted her. To be sure this wasn’t a trap, she had to wait it out. Time trickled away. Shaking in her strained legs indicated she had remained still for perhaps hours, maybe an entire shift rotation.

A couple of lab workers came out of the secure area, chatting as if the world wasn’t at a complete standstill, and walked through the wide double doors, exposing an empty hall outside.

This was as clear as she’d get. She pushed aside the lab coats, stepped out on cramping legs, and made her way to the door. She had to get this antidote into the right hands for Merry. She couldn’t think of anything else.

Outside of restricted areas, the floating island wasn’t guarded. Keeping her face impassive, she nodded at the few people she passed on her way back to the banquet kitchen. Nobody looked at her twice even with the nondescript but stolen research files tucked under her arm. Though Harp had said as much in his reports, the meek attitude of the inhabitants of this island proved the harshness of the owners, who discouraged any questions. Nobody saw anything here.

She scurried through the hatch, down the tunnel, and stopped short at the opening in the clouds. Nothing there. Not that it was time to come back around to the beanstalk.

With a flip of her collar, she palmed the special walkie. At her touch, it grew warm, like a living thing. “Bovine?”

In the silence, the wind tugged at the flaps of her jacket. She closed her eyes and dared not picture Harp as she’d last seen him.

“That you, Jaq?”

She smiled. She hadn’t realized how alone, how desperate she was until she heard Bovine’s dear, concerned voice.

“Listen. I have to hurry, and this is important.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have a package for you.” She detailed her plans—Bovine listening and asking questions when pertinent—and attached the walkie to the file. “Track it. It’s a matter of life or death.”

“You can count on me, always could. I’ll get the file, and I’ll have plenty of backup at the bottom of the stalk. You better be there.”

“Just retrieve the file. Nothing else matters.” After blowing into it to create float and cushion, she sealed the folder into an evidence bag pulled from her jacket pocket. Before she could rethink her plans, she threw it out into the blue sky.

There went Merry’s cure and Jaq’s walkie, her only connection to Bovine. The file disappeared from sight, floating to the ground. It’d remain intact in the bag, and the samples in the blister packs would be safe. She simply didn’t doubt Bovine would track the walkie, get the file and cure Merry.

She turned toward the tunnel. Time to find Harp, even if she wasn’t sure where the hell they’d taken him. She’d lied to Bovine when she’d said nothing else mattered. Harp mattered, more than she’d cared to admit to herself, and she couldn’t leave him. The urge to run down the tunnel surged through her legs, but she didn’t know where to go. They had some secure rooms on the lower level, for the ostensible purpose of valuables storage, which could easily be used as jail cells. They might be questioning him in the main Giant Corp offices or any place. She didn’t know where to start.

“Jaq.” The wind moaned her name.

She must be imagining things now. The past year had been bleak, the memories of what could have been haunting her dreams.

She pinched herself. “Damn, that hurt.”

She wasn’t dreaming, and she wasn’t haunted, but if she didn’t find the source of that sound, she’d be haunted the rest of her short life.

She nearly called back and bit her tongue. The coppery taste filled her mouth as she shaded her eyes and searched above her. Like the lander she was, she hadn’t looked up, not once, when she’d taken this platform at the bottom of the island.

There, three stories above, a balcony stretched out farther than the rest of the mansion. Shadows played through the slats between planks. It could be anybody up there. She could’ve imagined her name on the wind. But it wasn’t and she hadn’t.

She needed a good trellis to climb, or maybe Rapunzel to throw down her hair. Patting herself down, searching the pockets of her threadbare jacket, she couldn’t find anything to get her up there. The evidence bags wouldn’t help. She hadn’t brought any tech in case it set off an alarm when she’d breached the platform.

Her fingers curled around the dice in her pocket. On her palm, gleaming in the sunlight, the dice looked ordinary. She matched the fives together and pressed. The dice grew warm, vibrating, elongating. In seconds, she held a lethal stiletto. The blade, silver and deadly, was nearly as long as her forearm. The handle, the grip solid and hefty, still held the heat of transformation.

“Pretty.” She slid the weapon carefully into the laces of her boot. If she ever got up to the balcony, this would come in handy, but until then, she still had no way to climb.

“Can’t go back through the mansion,” she muttered around her thumbnail. Sometimes saying things out loud helped her to think in different ways. She glanced back down at her boot.

The laces.

She shook her head. They were strong, specialty laces she’d used before for various B&E type missions and to hold blades, like now, but she couldn’t use them to climb the mansion. The building itself had ledges at every floor, but the floors were too high, the window ledges spaced too far. She couldn’t reach from one to the other.

Snatches of sound came to her over the wind. She’d recognize that groan anywhere. She wiped the perspiration dropping in her eye, ran a hand through her hair, no doubt spiking it up in clumps pointing in all directions.

She had to move. Now. Ochre was known as a cruel man who never hesitated to use violence for the slimmest reasons. Anyone at his mercy would find he had none.

Tears of frustration stung her nose. There was no fast way up there. She had to go back through the mansion and risk getting caught breaking into the Ochres’ private apartments to get out to that balcony. Flipping through the blueprints in her mind, she planned a route.

Something nagged at her. Something she was overlooking in her frantic need to get to Harp. With deep breaths, she rolled her head on her shoulders and tried to focus. What was missing? She’d go back down the access tunnel, up the hatch, and through the kitchen. To the back stairs.

Stairs. If she took the main stairs, she’d come out at the top level viewing deck. She doubted anyone used it. Like landers never looking up, the people on the floating islands probably never looked down.

She wouldn’t look down, either.

Plan put to action, she didn’t glance back at the shadows above. She didn’t imagine what Harp must be suffering with the aching sounds she’d heard. She couldn’t think about how his beautiful body could be hurt, how his beautiful mind might be in agony.

She had so much to tell him. Like she loved him. She’d never actually told him. Maybe if she had…

With a swing, she climbed through the kitchen hatch and closed it behind her.

They’d been engaged, but she’d never told him her true feelings, how she feared he’d leave. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe that’s why he left. She’d never really opened to him.

Straightening her jacket and patting down her hair, she left the kitchen and nonchalantly strolled to the stairs and climbed. The stairs curved ahead and she plodded on, her legs heavy weights rebelling against her demands to get her up to the top.

On the second level, Vera Ochre rounded the curved stairs with a smug expression twisting her glossed lips. Jaq repressed the urge to stick her foot out and trip the bitch. How lovely it’d be, to watch her tumble on her bony ass all the way down the wide red-carpeted stairs.

Vera stopped beside her.

Jaq held her breath. She didn’t dare look at the mistress of Giant Corp. Instead, she ignored the trembling in her limbs and lifted her foot to take the next step.

A harsh grip on her arm stopped her. Vera’s nails sank into Jaq’s arm.

“Who are you?” Vera demanded.

“Medical courier.” She patted the courier bag for emphasis though the cover story no longer mattered. She had to move. Now. No time to reassure the woman she belonged here when every minute counted. Yanking on the woman’s grip, she twisted Vera’s arm, thrusting her away and hopefully down the stairs.

Like a cat clinging for dear life, Vera clutched at the railing and shrilled, “Guards.”

Then the woman lunged at her. They fell against the wall. Of same height and build, Vera still didn’t stand a chance against Jaq’s training. Jaq swung a leg out, hooked it around Vera’s legs and pushed her, hard. Vera slammed into the wall a few stairs down with a loud moan.

Jaq didn’t wait to see what Vera would do. She sprinted up the stairs. Around the bend, a man stopped and stared as she zipped past.

A shriek to “stop” from Vera didn’t slow her or send the man into motion behind her. If she could get to the top, that would be all she needed to escape Vera and anyone who answered her yelling for help.

She pushed through the sliding glass doors at the top and stumbled onto the landing of the observation deck. Trusting her instincts, the memorized blueprints, and her heart, she didn’t slow. She ran right to the edge.

With a hand on the railing, she vaulted over and sailed out into the blue sky.